SUNDARGARH: A sizeable population of Sundargarh town continues to face drinking acute water scarcity in the absence of piped water supply. Wards 11, 13, 16, 17 and a few others under Sundargarh Municipality are the worst-hit. As of now, the Public Health Engineer Organisation (PHEO) is supplying 5.4 MLD (million litres per day) against the requirement of 6.5 MLD for a population of about 50,000. Wards 11 and 13 are deprived of piped water supply, while 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 19 are partially covered.
Sundargarh organisational district president of BJP, BK Mishra said the town is facing the bigger menace of drying up of Ib river while construction of water supply projects is underway.Water from Ib river gets diverted near Satnadhar due to soil erosion. As a result, water flow to downstream areas of Mahadev Ghat, Sameli Ghat, Dunga Ghat and Darwar Ghat has drastically come down and during summer, the river bed resembles a desert.
In 2013, a low-height-bridge-cum-barrage proposal was announced at Kopsingha near Sundargarh town. But, the Water Resources Department (WRD) later redesigned it to pick-up weir and continues to be indecisive over it. With the WRD proposal pending and water storage in the river becoming going down, the district administration in 2018 proposed to set up an ‘In-Stream Storage’ structure on Ib river over a length of 2.5 km at a cost of Rs 50 crore from DMF. Both projects are in a limbo.
Mishra assured to revive the low-height-bridge-cum-barrage proposal for both water and communication needs. PHEO Executive Engineer, Anup Patel informed that drinking water problem will be sorted before next summer. He informed that work on a 7.5 MLD treatment plant and 6.5 lakh litre capacity sump at Ranibagicha is underway.
Another project for creation of Elevated Service Reservoir (ESR) and distribution networks in Zone 2 is underway at a revised cost of around Rs 9.27 crore with funding from the periphery development fund. He said two similar ESR and distribution network projects are also underway for Zone 1 and 3 with funding from the District Mineral Foundation at a combined cost of around Rs 32 crore. He said given the pace of works all these projects are likely to be completed by December 2019.